


living a while in the front of my skull

by morphological (phraseme)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Blood and Gore, Bodily Fluids, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Corpses, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, Eye Trauma, M/M, Murder, Possession, Prompt Fill, Serial Killers, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-26 14:25:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12559388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phraseme/pseuds/morphological
Summary: with the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger,i'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singeri'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself





	1. a gift of the heart

**Author's Note:**

> title and summary from the antlers' song "atrophy". for iwaoi horror week 2017.

the fingers come back first. long, shapely, callused at the edges; they are fingers hajime's held close more than once. he knows what they feel like against his tongue. they're blood-swollen, a bit purple, so hajime puts them in the fridge.

the marrow comes back in a pool. it's slick against his heel, hajime's foot slipping swift on the wet floor. it's yellow with no sign of the its housing, no casing cracked open like shellfish in the summer heat. hajime scowls, curses oikawa's name, and mops up the liquid. the smell lingers in his nose for days.

the threads grow at night. over hajime's skin, threatening to weave around his limbs, they cling like overgrown weeds, vines of veins and nerve branches. hajime struggles in his sleep, wakes up tasting (dust, no copper, the taste of death a dry kiss in his throat) nothing. maps of places he's never seen, a body he's never worn inside-out pulsating with his heart, beat for beat. oikawa tooru comes back in bits and pieces, to the place (the person) he calls home.

hajime doesn't ask questions. there are no questions left when oikawa has the last word, the permanent victory. he puts it all in the cold: the stiff tongue, the deflated eyes, the half-carcass of ribs sawn in half to fit in his humble freezer. it's still love, even if hajime fights to fit it all in, encompass the entirety of him, parts to a whole.

like the days before christmas, the countdown before a birthday, hajime waits for tooru to come back to him. a cobbled-together perfect, shoved in among ice packs. it is still a life, a love intact, until the summer his power cuts out.

"shit, shit, fuck,"

breathe in the warm air, the utter silence of death, a permanent absence,

no hum of the fridge at all in the air. "fuck you," he grits out between clenched teeth, directs it to the blind sky or to the body in the melting ice. he's nearly whole.

is it the scent of ice or the stench of the body? cold, but somehow comforting, a frozen embrace lacking muscle, missing skin, hajime sits in front of the open freezer door and waits for the inevitable to spill back out.


	2. knight & demon

he never holds back his punches. there should be more than this, more wounds, more enmity, but he's having fun, a good time. tooru loves a challenge, lets his gaze drift over the wreck he's made, where he leaves a hole punched-out and ragged-edged in the center of a human chest. blink, blink. power whines low in his ears, crackling static and fire-dust. armor should be made of more than steel.

today, it is no different. "if i buy your protection," tooru asks, but it's not a real question. it has no teeth. "would you stop coming?" a magical wind threatens to rush him away, shoves at his shoulders and the small of his back, insistent. but tooru is already home. torn from its casing, hajime's heart beats inside his fist.

it's unlike hajime to be so silent, a passenger stopped on a dark walkway between life and death. a dying animal panting for breath, tooru can smell the blood rushing from his skin, erupting from his wounds. hajime plants his sword point-down and heaves to stay upright, an ugly grin painted on his mouth. "fuck off."

even if tooru had fingers for eyes, he would still know that face. he lets the vision become real if only for a moment, fingertips peeking out under his lids as fleshy lashes, trades his eyes for his palms. hajime's blood wets the whites. blink, blink. "i can still kill you now," he points out, and lets the vision dissolve. he might take something else from him, but hajime is near-lethal with that sword. if he were anyone else—if tooru keeps fucking around—he'd be dead to rights.

"you should have done that ages ago." when he'd firespelled the letter, hajime's laughable warrant eaten by flames, yes, tooru should have burnt him alive, too. let him cook in his little tin body. everything is, instead, where it should be. tooru lifts up the still-beating flesh and opens his mouth, hopes he might see hajime wince.

"if you eat it, i'll make sure you choke."

the heart twitches at the sound of its owner's voice. he likes this one, throws back his head to laugh, bares his fangs. "promises, iwa-chan," he grins, and grips hajime's heart in both hands. he can almost taste the blood on his tongue.


	3. a flower that blooms at night

"i think i love you." tooru breathes it aloud when he sees hajime for who he really is. he's hardly had to work tonight, barely lifted a finger while he'd settled down to watch, to observe iwaizumi hajime as nature had intended. meat-headed and honest, who'd have thought, the boy next door moving with such a primal grace?

with a stranger's blood on his hands, soaking into the front of his shirt, hajime still has the ability to blush pink in his cheeks. "shut up." not unlike pulling pigtails at school, or catching cicadas in midsummer, oikawa's eyes watching for the telltale reply, the instinct that indicates truth. no takebacks.

the fire had burned brightly that night. the next day, it was all anyone in the city could talk about.

 

* * *

 

"watch it, iwa-chan," tooru laughs, stepping forward to heave the body upright. "you'll leave fingerprints everywhere." there's no point when they'll torch the place, hajime and tooru and three bottles of bleach, some household cleaners and a clever match. they've learned some things over the years, the value of gloves and a well-placed syringe, but good work (proper work, tooru relishing in the details like a paranoiac before the gates of heaven) was always a joy, a hands-on project.

hajime grumbles under his breath something that sounds suspiciously like "backseat murderer." they haul the body into bed, tooru humming while he smooths the covers over. "you're a freak," hajime deadpans, but it's hard to take it seriously when the bloodlust is still in his eyes. tooru stops humming.

"don't be jealous," he replies, mildly affronted. "i'm not the one with blood on his clothes."

hajime snorts. "yeah, okay." he says it a little louder this time, _backseat murder freak_ , bossy by any other name, a trait tooru's had since they were kids. the body sleeps between them, a parody of a family sitcom, and tooru pats his open palm over the sheets, suggestive grin crawling over his face.

hajime flinches. "no, we're not gonna do it in here, _god_."

"prude," tooru snickers, but it's true, they wouldn't. the risk is too high; if they want to keep playing the game, they have to have limits. there's no chance anyone would even know they were there. they never have a real connection to the victims

(police spokesman asks the public to remain calm. there is no curfew yet but the mayor is highly considering the recommendation. the families are being contacted as we speak.)

with no families, no lovers. lonely people who would never know what tooru knows, what hajime shares with him, no intimacy bred by blood and murder after sunset. that's what it had meant, the cumulative _i love you_ s breathed in the roaring blaze swallowed up in smoke with the flash-bang explosion and the strength in hajime's hands, their weakness apparent, when tooru places them over his neck in a challenge, in a promise. the city blooms flowers that night, ashen petals and no green, no life anywhere, except where tooru breathes and hajime moves. these, too, are confessions.

no takebacks.


	4. unstitch your shed-off soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is 100000% inspired by [riseelectric](http://archiveofourown.org/users/riseelectric)'s [beautiful wondrous astounding art](https://riseelectric.tumblr.com/post/166936229906/how-do-you-appease-a-bloodthirsty-river-god-for) for iwaoi horror week day 6: sacrifice + the thing that lives in the dark water. chapter title from the antlers' song "putting the dog to sleep".

the sacrifice comes in with the tide. 

he smells of fear, but not his own. fear is a stench that clings to his skin, to the chains and the anchor dragging him down. the water god can smell the tang of metal, of blood. there was a clumsy magic once. 

nameless, powerless, _what are you?_ the boy struggles to breathe, words in the bubbles streaming from his lips. the water god doesn't swim, merely exists underwater, a living shape of tempest and storm. he trails a long, slender finger over the boy's cheek. 

he tilts his head away in response, temple pressed against the anchor's unforgiving steel. the boy growls, but his voice is swallowed by the weight of the water. he shakes his arms, as if to say, _let me go_ , but what use is metal to a water god? better to have them rust, and if he is still alive, let him shake off those chains himself. 

but never let it be said he didn't help. after all, he'd been given up into the water god's care. water fills up the boy's lungs, tears welling up in his eyes, water caressing his skin and water filling him up. he can't spit it out. possessive, loving, _yes, yes, choke me down_. the closest thing to a real death that the water god might give: the thick taste of magic and the promise of power.

that was five years ago, or more: the metal turned to rust, then to flakes in the water, dried iron a bright, sharp tang on the water god's tongue. the clumsy magic keeping the sacrifice alive (intact, better to think it that way, no bloated corpse fouling the waters) is a thorn in the water god's side. immutable, he tastes nothing at all like human terror anymore. 

 

when he's bored, the water god turns the glass face of the river upside-down. he wrecks ships on the banks, drives people into the water and eats them whole, their bodies swallowed up by the cruel waves. he laughs a gale and dances on the water, his legs drawing up the current and crashing the tide against the shore. the water god taunts every sailor at his mercy, breaking the face of every praying angel and mermaid carved into the helpless ships. they were messengers of a sort, but directed at the wrong power. he would teach them fear: there would be no deliverance from _him_. it will always remain thus, impossible to separate the force of nature from the deity. 

on the other side of the water, under the churning waves, the boy catches the sailors thrown overboard. they freeze over in shock at the touch of human hands on their skin, strong hands gripping them as if to drag them down even further into the depths, but he's kinder than they expect. 

one by one, like fallen leaves, they float up to the surface. the boy had taken the death from their bodies. 

 

the water god had forgotten about this, the human magic. the taking of burdens but not of lives. the water reeks of it, of a secret held from him like a breath, but depths always had a way of squeezing such things out. he brings the storm back home, to the bottom of the river, enraged at this robbery, this disrespect.

the boy smiles from the deeps. he looks more godlike than human these days, his eroded flesh long shredded away. he looks like he was born in the dark, his beating heart found in the riverbed, and the secret streams from his lips in bubbles. trapped between breaths, with no exhale ever replenished by air, the boy feeds the water god his prayers. 

the scraps of the water god's victory color the water. he can see it all: human lungs giving out, the drifting, the black. the water god tastes no magic, no fear. the boy delivers it mouth to mouth, a secondhand death stolen fresh from the surface, the prayers of the dying, at the moment when human belief is strongest.

 

a hundred years ago, people waited by the shore to see if the water god would reject his sacrifice. they tied a boy to an anchor and prayed for peace. 

the boy never came back.


End file.
